Want to earn money on Squidoo?
Be honest.

Want to rank well in Google?
Genuinely help your readers.

Want to be a Giant Squid?
Don’t give up.

Want to be in the Top 100 Lists?
Learn from the best.

Want a lens that earns $hundreds per month?
Make a LOT of lenses.

Want your lenses to look beautiful?
Use lots of pictures.

Want more visitors to your lenses?
Make something worthy.

Want to have some fun?
Write about your passions.

Want to make a profit?
Write about what sells.

Don’t know what you want?
Just get started anyway.

And they just keep getting better!

His latest creation is the Lens Love Module.

How many times have you visited a lens, got to the bottom of it, and forgotten to rate it? If you’re like me, probably lots.

Tim’s Lens Love module will put a nice row of stars at the BOTTOM of your lens as well as the existing ones at the top, which means your lens visitors can get to the bottom and still rate your lens without forgetting.

You can click here to add the Lens Love Module to your lenses

And you can click here to see a live example and read Tim’s explanation of it

Oh beautiful wonderful Tim, what’s next!

Lewis

P.S. have you added this module to your lenses? Have you noticed more ratings than normal? Do you put it at the bottom, or somewhere in the middle? What are your thoughts?

Are you using every opportunity to earn money from your lenses and make every sale you can? Don’t beat yourself up about it. I wrote this lost as a guide for me to begin with.

Here are some things to consider:

• Are you adding affiliate links [to trusted products] within the text, linking keywords and phrases?

• Do you have a module on each lens with links to the top products for that topic?

• Have you added a relevant link to your Bio for each lens?

• Have you added the Featured Lens module to each lens to refer people between all your lenses?

• Have you added a poll? Have you made any of the answers into links?

• Do you look through the stats for your lenses and see what the most popular keywords are that people are using to find your lenses? This is a treasure trove of attainable keywords that you can make more lenses targeting!

• Do you feature your existing lenses in the sidebar of your new lenses using the Lensroll feature?

• Do you use your lenses to build mailing lists, for follow up compaigns on your profitable lenses? [if not check out www.squidootricks.com]

• Do you make more your lenses in clusters, making multiple lenses about a certain topic, looking at it from different angles and targeting different keywords?

• What else could you be doing to get each visitor to be worth more to you?

It’s about PROFIT!!

Lewis

I would guess that more than 99.9% of lensmasters treat their lensmaking time as a hobby. It pays rather nicely if you hit upon a great niche idea and write up some great content, but most of the time people are making lenses it’s probably more fun than work.

If it felt like work they probably wouldn’t do it as much, in their free time no less!

For the casual Squidoo Lensmaster making lenses as a hobby, the hope of earning some extra pocket money and getting some friendly guestbook comments is enough of an extra incentive to keep them going.

But what would happen if you took a pen and paper and wrote down some goals for your Squidoo Income?

If you began to treat it more like a mission than a hobby then some really magical things would start to happen. You would be motivated to make more lenses and make more profits, write more useful information, learn more money-making ideas, and really start to devote enough time to your lensmaking to do some REAL damage.

Let’s say you set yourself a task of building 5 new lenses a week to earn an extra $500 a month from Squidoo.

You could start by:

Making a lens about anything you buy online
Making a lens about anything you search google for but find no useful results
Making a lens about different places to visit in your home town or country
Making a lens about each book you read
Making a lens about each film you see
Making a lens about different affiliate products which inspire you
Making a lens about a celebrity
Making a lens about a favourite charity
Making a lens about your friend’s business
Making a lens about a question that’s been bugging you
Making a lens about the best software to do XYZ
Making a lens about making lenses!
Making a lens about your favourite recipe
Making a lens about anything you think will sell!

And before you know it a year has gone by and your 5 lenses a week have turned into an impressive roster of 260 lenses.

Out of all those lenses you will have made some absolute winners, and also some absolute duds. But it’s the only way to learn what will and won’t succeed.

Also, it won’t take you long making lenses about things you know to realise that some topics are more profitable than others, and you will naturally be drawn to them.

I have a lens that I wrote one day just for fun that has earned me over $7500 in the past 2 years (from affiliate sales). And I only struck upon the topic by making a load of dud lenses first and just thinking it would be cool to make a lens about so-and-so.

When you start to focus on reaching income goals with your lenses you can start to see the whole process in a whole new light. That lens really opened my eyes to what is possible. That one lens has earned an average $300+ a month for the last 2 years.

Do you see yourself as a real Internet Niche Marketer and are you treating your online money-making as a real business? Or is making money on Squidoo just an extra-pocket-money hobby?

Lewis

P.S. don’t get me wrong. Both are fine. Hobby or business. But if you are looking for the big bucks online… treat it as a goal-worthy business. That’s the only way you will make it to 100, 200, or 500+ lenses.

Squidoo has added some cool Facebook Connect connections.

Here is how the wonderful and beautiful and talented Megan Casey explains SquidooConnect: “SquidooConnect is like a bridge between Squidoo and Facebook. It helps your friends cross over to see your lenses, and helps you cross over to talk to people about your lenses on Facebook. It’s up to you how often you use it!”

She has made a lens answering questions at http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-facebook-connect

If you have not yet hooked your facebook profile up with your Squidoo account just head to http://www.squidoo.com/member/profile and scroll right to the bottom.

Are you going to use this Squidoo/Facebook connection? Do you keep your real life friends and your Squidoo lenses separate? And… what other Squidoo/Facebook integration would you like to see?

Lewis

Are you building a mailing list from your lenses?

When someone lands on your lens, how many chances of a sale do you get?

Mostly the answer will be… one.

If you get the person to look at a couple of your lenses then your chance of a sale doubles and triples.

But what if your lens visitors said to you ‘Hey! I like your style! Here, take my email address and send me cool stuff!’

If you could get your lens visitors to opt in to your newsletter or niche list then you would really start to turn yourself into a savvy niche marketer.

You can see this in action on many of my lenses.

I actually have one single lens that I have used to build a mailing list of over 4000 (FOUR THOUSAND!!) people, all interested in the same thing.

Now when I make a lens about that same topic… I just send them all a quick email letting them know. And voila. Instant audience. Instant income from any sales.

Are you wasting the chance to build an email list asset from your lenses?

I use an autoresponder company called Aweber. I highly recommend them, and they are the best at what they do.

And I’ve also put together a step by step guide on how to get live opt in forms onto your lenses which you can get from www.SquidooTricks.com.

If you are missing out on extra visitors and extra income from having your own fanbase, this week can be the time you change all that.

Lewis

P.S. there are companies like aweber which offer a free service, but it is most often a case of ‘You get what you pay for’. But for someone just starting out the free option at getresponse.com might be enough.

Squidoo groups have really begun to prove themselves in Google. In almost all cases they outrank lenses, get a higher PageRank, and get more backlinks naturally than lenses.

That’s right. Groups are outranking lenses in Google.

This means is would be incredibly wise for you to add Squidoo groups to your list of Google Ranking Weapons.

For Example: If you just made a lens about The Little Shop of Horrors, make a group for it too. You can target a slightly different keyword/phrase, add your lens to the group and feature it on the group homepage, and your lens sidebar will automatically link to the group.

Squidoo Groups have been partially hidden by Squidoo HQ because they haven’t had the time to devote to making them better as they have with lenses.

This means your groups don’t show on your lensmaster page, and the Workshop Edit mode tools are still very old compared to the fancy new workshop mode we have for making lenses. 

But they are still extremely powerful in Google. I have been looking lately at which Squidoo pages are ranking well in Google, and Groups always come up top. Above lenses with more content, even.

So start making companion groups to go with the lenses you want to get traffic to!

This is something I have not done enough of and am really going to start putting a lot of energy into.

Have you had good results with groups yet?

Lewis

You make a question lens, kind of like Yahoo Answers meets Squidoo, and people can write and vote answers via Twitter.

When they participate by answering your question a link to your lens appears on their Twitter profile page to all their Twitter followers. And if those followers participate then their followers see the link too. And on it goes…

It’s a viral creation. And it’s really rather slick. The Squidoo HQ people are quite a clever bunch.

You can see a nice example of a Twitter Storm lens here, and you can make your own here.

The whole Twitter Storm concept has given me some really cool ideas.

Yahoo answers gets a ton of visitors from google when people search for the same question, not just the keywords. For example instead of searching for ‘Best BlackBerry App’ they might search for ‘What are the best blackberry apps?’.

So I’m thinking.. I make a bunch of lenses to test this out and turn Squidoo TwitterStorm lenses into yahoo answer-type google traffic magnets. Phew! That’s something of a mouthful.

Handy use of guestbook modules, polls, and the Twitter storm tool itself could result in a really interactive, useful and viral page.
It’s definitely worth testing.

I have made a list of about 50 questions I am going to turn into lenses.

And if it turns out that a guestbook would have worked better than the new TwitterStorm tool then that’s something we will have to investigate…

How are you going to use Twitter Storm?

Lewis

P.S. you can follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/mrlewissmile

This is the easiest source of backlinks for your lenses.

Your other lenses!

If you get 1 person looking at 1 of your lenses, you have just had 1 chance of a sale.

If you manage to get that person to look at another one of your (related) lenses then you have just doubled your chances of a sale.

If you can turn 1 visitor into 2, or 3, or 4, then we’re talking about gaining fans and customers, not just visitor numbers on your dashboard!

Here is a short list to tick off to make sure you’re doing everything you can to get more people into your Squidoo net:

1. Do you use the Featured Lens module on all your lenses? You can use the Featured Lens module throughout the content and at the bottom to direct people to your related lenses. The Featured Lenses module is probably my favourite module.

2. Do you Lensroll your related lenses together? This makes a list of lens links appear in the sidebar of each lens to the other lenses. It is really easy to forget to do this because you need to visit each lens in order to lensroll it (it can’t be done from the sidebar in edit mode yet), so make sure you don’t forget this one!

3. Do you link keywords in the text to your other lenses? You can use a linkmaker tool I created to do this step if you don’t yet know how to write a html link into your lens: www.buildmylens.com/linkmaker The tool spits out code for you to put into a Text module on your lens.

4. Are you feeding your lenses into an rss module? This won’t count as backlinks in Google’s eyes, but it will work to get people to explore more of your lenses. You can put an RSS module as the last module on your lenses, and use it to list your other lenses. Just use your own version of the following link as the RSS Feed URL, but replace mrlewissmile with your own Squidoo username: http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lensmaster/mrlewissmile

Before you start thinking about what you can do to get backlinks from other sites and blogs first take a look at your growing list of lenses and see if you can do more to link them all together to create a huge network of links and lenses that a visitor could easily spend a few hours exploring

Lewis

A backlink is when another webpage or blog or lens links to your lens. They ‘link back’ to you, as if they are voting for you by linking to you. They trust you, and are willing to link to you.

A backlink is also known as an Inbound link, or an Incoming link.

When Google determines how high in the results to put your lens they look at how many backlinks it has, as it helps determine what is worth looking at.

In an ideal world every lens and blog post you write would be so utterly fantastic and groundbreaking that hundreds of people would be compelled to link to you. But this isn’t the case, because in an effort to compete in different niches you will target the keywords people are searching for.

So you will need to be proactive and generate as many backlinks as you can yourself.  As the old saying suggests: “If you want anything done, do it yourself”

Over the next few weeks I will be posting some great ways to build your backlinks. I will review some sites, recommend actions for you to take, and we’ll work on getting ranked higher in Google.

The one thing every lens will benefit from is more traffic. It’s funny – where else but in Internet Marketing is ‘TRAFFIC’ a good thing?!

Lewis

It’s shiny, bubbly-looking, and clean.

The best thing for you to do is check it out! Go now and edit a lens. It’ll be a nice surprise.

A couple of people have asked me what I think of it, so I thought I would post a proper review instead of just a couple of thoughts.

Here are some good things:

1. The first thing you’ll notice is that the whole workshop design now closely matches the final published version of your lens (the colours, the width, the style) so you can see what your lens will look like published before you hit publish. Marvellous!

2. You can now add modules from the sidebar. This is GREAT for a whole number of reasons. You can add, say, 3 of this module and 4 of that module, then hit apply. The page refreshes and there are your modules waiting for you. A sideaffect of this is that the Featured Lenses module has finally seen the light of day! For so long it was hidden away under ‘F’ in the A-Z module search, which was a terrible shame. (It’s one of my favourite modules.)

3. You can now reorder a whole bunch of modules in the sidebar by dragging the titles up and down. This is great for organising your lens, but still not even approaching the ease at which you can shift ‘capsules’ around on hubpages. Ajax ajax ajax! Once you’ve reordered your modules you will need to click Apply, then the page will refresh showing you your changes. You can also use this to mass-delete modules you don’t need, which is nice.

4. If you are a Giant Squid you will be able to insert your Lens Templates into your lenses right from the sidebar. This is incredible. Lensmaking just got even faster for Giants. Everyone should be a Giant Squid, even you.

And here are some bad things:

1. The big black strip along the top of the page. It takes up so much room and isn’t really necessary. If you are an Amazon Associate you will be reminded of the new Associates bar when you are surfing amazon. But this Lens Workshop one is far too big and filled with things that you really don’t need on the screen the entire time you are making your lens. I hope this gets shrunk.

2. The Up and Down arrows are gone from the modules. Because all module reordering is now done from either the sidebar or the Add Modules screen, the arrows have vanished. I find this a real pain for just moving one module above another. You have to go all the way back to the top and move the little sidebar title instead of pushing the module itself. I guess this is something to get used to, but at it seems like more work a lot of the time.

3. You can’t collapse a module anymore. This is a real shame, because it was really useful to finish a module then just get it out of the way by collapsing it (clicking on the module title so the content of the module doesn’t show). I wish this was brought back.

4. The biggest button on the whole screen does not need to be ‘Publish’. This is more of a critisism of the big fat black strip at the top, but I thought I would mention it :p

5. The last thing I hope gets changed is the fact that changes you make to module titles is no reflected in the sidebar ‘reorder modules’ panel. This takes away any benefit the sidebar reordering brought with it because you will still need to reload the page to update the sidebar before you can reorder, THEN you will have to click apply to save the changes and refresh the page. So you might as well just go to the old Add Modules screen, reorder, then come back again. Biggest pain ever.

And that’s my review!

Positives and negatives, and hopes for the future

What do YOU think?
Do you love the new workshop?
Do you hate it?

What’s missing?

Lewis

P.S. Thanks for all the hard work, Squidoo HQ!

So here it is.

Blog About Your Topic and Your Lenses!

If you are making Lenses on Squidoo to earn yourself any kind of money, you need a blog too. If only to blog about every new lens you make.

I have put together a few lenses lately to push you to get started if you haven’t already.

They are:

• 13 Reasons Why You Need a Blog (the stats I put in one of the modules on this lens are DEFINITELY worth reading)

• Should you start a BLOG or a WEBSITE?

• How to set up a blog in 5 minutes or less

Set up a blog. Make it your christmas gift to yourself. All you need is to invest some time. It will pay off.

Lewis

50 REALLY GREAT lenses. Original ideas, beautifully executed, that you are proud to put your name to.

Once you get to 50+ great lenses you can submit your name to Squidoo HQ by emailing them at giants@squidoo.com.

The Single Biggest Reason You Need To Be A Giant Squid:

The Lens Templates.

As a Giant Squid you get to have your own Lens Templates. Which means when you are creating a lens you can choose which pre-set palette of modules you want to add to your new lens. I have a template for amazon product review lenses, one of just 20 text modules for content-heavy lenses, one with my favourite mixture of modules, etc etc, you get the idea.

You have no idea how much time this saves! You get the inspiration to start a new lens, and usually spend about 5 – 10 mins beating the modules in to position before you even put ‘pen to paper’.

Advice: Become a Giant Squid on Squidoo, become a giant squid on squidoo, become a giant squid on squidoo!!

It will seriously speed up your ability to make great lenses, which means more time to spend:

a. with your family
b. making more lenses
c. making more lenses
d. making more lenses

Lewis
P.S.

Here are some things Megan says will help you become a Giant Squid. She has put a load more info up at www.squidoo.com/giantsquids

* Make lenses about things that interest you.
* Write good introductions.
* Have intro photos.
* Upload a photo of yourself (or your avatar) while you’re at it.
* Try out a bunch of different modules.
* Replace the default module titles, like “New Guestbook.”
* UUU – Unique, useful, updated content rocks!
* Don’t copy. Don’t cut and paste. Don’t plagiarize.
* Keep an eye out for style. Junky lenses send readers running.
* Stop by the SquidU forum and get feedback. Ask politely.
* Stay relevant on your lens.
* G-rated or R-rated, please.
* You’re an author: act like one. Don’t publish half-baked lenses.
* Watch for typos.
* Be kind to fellow lensmasters and your readers.
* Don’t spam.
* Sure, sell stuff; but don’t sound like a snakeoil salesman when you do.
* Invite readers to participate. Or not.
* Recommend things you know.
* Explain your topic to new readers.
* Experiment with “front doors” like SquidWho and SquidSports and SquidBoo and SquidFlix, but don’t ONLY make those lenses. (It’s often easy to pump those out without adding much “you” to them).
* Own a niche and make lots of lenses in it. But don’t repeat yourself on the same topic. 40 lenses that say the exact same thing aren’t kosher.
* Diversify.
* Link to and feature other people’s lenses. It feels good to give back.
* Be passionate. Be you.
* Be honest and straightforward and creative.

It is probably the most requested Squidoo feature from internet marketers. They want to use their lenses to build mailing lists.

Ever since Squidoo blocked the i-frame code we have been unable to get this working on lenses.

Until now.

You can now put a live opt in form on your Squidoo lenses!

Not an image of the opt in form like like normal, and not a link to your opt in page. An actual opt in form live in a module on your lens.

I put it all into a guide to take you through step by step, so you can’t fail at it.

You can read more and download it at www.SquidooTricks.com

Lewis

P.S. you can see an example at www.squidoo.com/opt

Tiffany, my partner at BuildMyLens.com, wrote an article yesterday that gave a nice little roundup of a few sites built on the same idea as Squidoo.

Give them a go if you haven’t, comment on your experience if you have!

************

HubPages – This website gives users a chance to show what they know for free. You can create single Hub Pages where you feature yourself and your knowledge. For marketers, a Hub Page is a good way to build your brand. But be careful – they’re persnickety about how many links you use and where they lead.

Google Knol – A knol is an article about a specific subject. Google Knol is a place where, like Squidoo, you can share information with others by creating and posting your own knols. Google Knol gives you a way to share, connect with other experts, be more visible, brand yourself and grow. Like Squidoo, they’re relaxed on your marketing efforts!

Weebly – Weebly is a cool website that allows you to build your own web page for free. It offers some nice, user-friendly features that make it easy to create a professional looking site that will give you increased visibility and a place to link your Hub Pages, Squidoo lenses and Knols to as well as other domains.

Finding websites like Squidoo that give you free resources for getting your name and face out there is like finding money in an old coat pocket – what a bonus! Take advantage of all of these resources and grow your brand through the peer-to-peer social networking media outlets on the World Wide Web.

************

Tiffany and I have a lens building service at BuildMyLens.com, and a Knol building service at BuildMyKnol.com. Check us out.

And the more sites like Squidoo you use to target your keywords and phrases the more success you will have.

So go dive right in…

Lewis

So here goes

Why Squidoo Tags Are Useless

Things change. Goal posts move. And it is our job to keep up with the moves and revaluate what is working and what is not, what brings results and what does not, and what is worth our time and what is not.

Tags used to be marvellous traffic pullers. You could add a bunch of tags to our lenses and Google would discover your lens twice as fast. You could plug into an already ranked network of pages to push your lens into the Google Limelight.

Your lens would get some pagerank leaking over from the high ranking tags pages (high quality by association), and it was the quickest way to get other pages in the Squidoo eco-system to link to you.

In short, it was the lazy way to short term lens success! And there was nothing wrong with the lazy way. Squidoo built it in to the system, and it worked fantastically.

But now it doesn’t. Like I said. Goal posts move.

So, we need new ways to replace what tags previously did for us. Here is why tags are now useless.

***************

1. Google does not see tags pages anymore.

Squidoo had thousands upon thousands of tags pages ranked in Google. We created them, Google found them. The tags pages connected every single lens to every other lens on the site. Like a giant sitemap, but more specific. Your lens about ‘transformers talking action figures’ would be linked to my lens about the very same thing, just because we both tagged our lenses with the same thing. The entire site was connected. Google recognized this and we got a nice helping hand in the rankings.

But now, Squidoo blocks Google from seeing the tags pages.

Squidoo has added a line to it’s Robots.txt file telling Google not to look at any pages that begin with http://www.squidoo.com/tags. Which of course, all tags pages do. So Google faithfully ignores all tags pages. Which means the links in the sidebar of your lens linking your lens to all the tags pages are ignored. Squidoo is effectively saying “Nothing to see here Google! Move along!”

You can see the robots.txt file by going to http://www.squidoo.com/robots.txt

***************

2. Squidoo tags WILL affect how your lens does in Squidoo search results.

You know that little search box in the sidebar of a lens? That’s the Squidoo Search box.

One reason you may think tags are still worth your time is because how you tag your lens will affect how well your lens ranks in Squidoo’s own Search Results.

I am convinced that the only people searching Squidoo using the Squidoo search box are lensmasters. Why? Because who would search Squidoo using it?! You search Google, or Yahoo, or wherever you came from to find Squidoo in the first place.

I honestly don’t think the casual surfer who arrives on a Squidoo lens who doesn’t find what they’re looking for will choose to search the rest of Squidoo instead of just hit ‘back’ from the lens and continue searching Google or Yahoo.

Squidoo HQ must have the stats for these ideas, and they make changes to Squidoo.com based on statistical evidence, so I may be wrong about this.

I really can’t see the casual surfer, who isn’t a lensmaster and who doesn’t participate in other content-publishing communities like HubPages or Gather, searching Squidoo just for the fun of it.

***************

3. Some people have claimed in the comments here that Google still indexes tags pages and that they’ve seen recently indexed tags pages.

Here is a google search results page for all Squidoo tags pages Google has indexed:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=site%3Asquidoo.com%2Ftags%2F&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

A total of 11.

And these are only still being shown because they have yet to drop from the index. It doesn’t give any weight to any tags pages. Squidoo’s Robots.txt ‘disallows’ google from counting them. So any others Google find and records don’t count for anything.

***************

4. The Discovery Tool

The tags you choose will determine which lenses show up in the Discovery tool on your lens. Likewise your tags will determine which lenses your lens will appear on.

The Discovery Tool is a noticeable blue box underneath your introduction containing links to 5 related lenses. You are allowed to choose up to 3 of those lenses.

Some people love the Discovery Tool, other people don’t. I don’t. So I disable it on all of my lenses.

Squidoo implemented the Discovery Tool because they value some lenses more than other lenses. This is right of them to do, of course, because a huge amount of lenses are rubbish. So Squidoo needs a way to get people from rubbish lenses to the good lenses.

But here’s the problem.

If someone arrives at one of my lenses I want them to keep reading. If they like the lens they will read. They will skip over the Discovery Tool and keep reading, they won’t bother with it.

If they land on one of Squidoo’s many rubbish lenses they aren’t likely to think ‘Hey. Let’s explore more rubbish pages like this’. They will just click BACK.

The Discovery Tool is great for linking all lenses together, but I will only start using it if it’s pushed into the sidebar instead of the most ridiculous place Squidoo HQ could find – directly under the introduction!

***************

I still add a good Primary Tag to my lenses and maybe about 5 other relevent tags in case things change in future, but long gone are the days of spending time to perform proper keyword research beyond what I do to make a lens to begin with.

As I said at the start of this post, there are things you can do to replace the effectiveness of the tags pages.

These include:

1. Start a group! Squidoo dissolved the usefulness of groups a while ago when they stopped featuring them in places (like your Lensmaster Profile), but Google still notices group pages and will give weight to lenses featured on your Group Homepage.

2. Bookmark your lenses on sites like digg.com and delicious.com. It’s easy and quick.

3. Build lenses that are related to each other. This gives you a much greater advantage than when compared with someone who builds just one lens on a particular topic. Joe does this brilliantly. Check out his lenses here.

4. Link your related lenses together. Use the Lensroll feature. Use the secret ‘Featured Lenses’ module. Use a Link Plexo module and embed it onto your lenses. Use text links throughout your text. Make a Recommended Resource module and link away!

5. Do more keyword research before you start building your lens. Choose what keywords and phrases you want to rank for, then go after them with relevent text and links and titles.

There are more. Always more. Let’s hear them in the comments.

Now share your thoughts!

Lewis

www.squidoocool.com

I said it!

Next, I shall explain why..

Squidoo has just created 10 new categories for us to play with.

They have added a couple that probably could/should have been added from the beginning (like Home & Garden!) and they added a couple that are more of an experiment than anything else (like Duel and the potentially-troublesome Work at Home).

Here is the list of new categories:

* Books
* About me
* Humor
* Home & Garden
* Religion & Spirituality
* Work at Home
* Green Living
* Pop Culture & Celebs
* Squidoo How To
* Duels

Books is interesting, because squidoo lensmasters sell a LOT of books (a LOT!).

Also, the fact that ‘Squidoo How To’ needs it’s own category is a nice testament to the whole bunch of great people helping others on squidoo.

And Green Living – that should draw a lot of traffic.

Thanks Squidoo!

I’m still hoping for a Christmas category (which would make the lens itself go all Christmassy and tinsel covered), and a few people are still hoping for a History category, but we can dream on

Lewis

Check it out. Edit one of your charity lenses, click Add Modules, and add the new Donations module.

A lot of work has gone into this module, you can tell. Every charity is represented well, with logos and write-ups.

What It Does And How It Does It:

The module opens and looks just like a normal Text module. But instead of a box for you to upload an image there is a drop down menu full of all Squidoo-Supported charities!

So you pick your favorite charity from the list, and save the module as normal. Give it a title first though.

And VOILA! You will see a very good looking module all about your favorite charity with a big fat Donate button. Your visitor can enter their chosen amount and click Donate and they will be taken straight to Paypal where they can send the cash!

Good for Lensrank too maybe?

In the same way your lensrank is boosted when someone makes a purchase on your lens, it is quite possible that the new donation module is factored in to the lensrank calculations too. This is just a guess. But I see no reason why Squidoo would not reward the lens the money got sent from. Donations from your lens are certainly tracked.

So. Show off your donation modules!

I just added one to my lens about the super-cool charity Kiva. you can see it about half way down above the guestbook module. Check it out here: www.squidoo.com/mykiva

Lewis